Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday December 29, 2011 @10:52AM
from the but-it's-a-digital-messaging-platform dept.

SharkLaser writes "It turns out that Google has started to remove Google+ pictures that have persons giving the middle finger in it. 'Our policy page states, "Your Profile Picture cannot include mature or offensive content." Your profile photo was taken down as a violation of this policy.' Google+ is supposed to be a universal social network and 'identity service,' and to allow sharing like in real life — a public venue for free expressions. Since the middle finger is such culturally-specific issue, will Google+ also start to remove things like showing the palms of your hands to people (considered an insult in Greece), showing the soles of your shoes (insult in the Middle East), and patting someone's head (an insult in Buddhist countries)? A good number of Google+ users have started to change their profile picture to include the middle finger to show support to MG Siegler, who got his profile picture removed by Google."

I am offended by all pictures containing mirrors. I demand that all social networks immediately terminate all profiles featuring photographs with mirrors in them! Or displaying their captive animals they call "pets" (how abusive!) Or holding alcohol - don't they have any respect for the alcoholics they're teasing?! Then there are those photos of people grappling others. They call it hugging and try to make it look all chummy, but I can see their unbridled violence! While they're at it, they can get rid of all of those profiles with pictures of people baring their teeth - there are so many of those! There are also many profiles with pictures that are straining to look at - out of focus, poorly lit or colored, or otherwise difficult to look at. It is so very offensive for people to post such pictures. I'm sure if they remove all of these offending profiles, the social networks would be better, happier places!

And if you flipped the bird on the street you could get arrested.It's exactly what you said, G+ is for adults. Adults should behave as such and not put stupid pictures like that. If adults can't behave themselves, somebody has to force them and in this case it's Google. Better them than the government, but frankly it's sad that a corporation is the one that has to teach proper behavior to people.

where do you get arrested for flipping the bird casually? same place where you can't listen to rap, rock or punk?

but really, the picture in question (the one that google pulled) is pretty goddamn tame.. google went overboard. and if it's the thought that counts, you can still know that it's the middle finger in the censored version he put up.

the point is that google has now chosen to _be_ the censor on how your hand is supposed to be on a profile picture. that's their choice and their failing. it's not like

U.S. District Judge David S. Cercone ruled David Hackbart exercised his constitution right to free speech in 2006 when he angrily displayed his middle finger to another driver during a parking dispute in Squirrel Hill and when he displayed the same gesture to Officer Brian Elledge, who told Hackbart to stop.

“The United States Supreme Court has long recognized that non-verbal gestures and symbols may be entitled to First Amendment protection,” Cercone wr

If someone can't be social without showing their middle finger then they need to learn some social skills.

Or perhaps they just have different humor than you? Perhaps they do have social skills, but different ones than you? It might be difficult to believe, but society's (or your) standards probably aren't objectively correct.

Not only that, but this middle fingers in pictures likely aren't directed at anyone in particular. Who exactly would be offended by such a thing? How many people? How many people would be offended enough by some picture that isn't even directed at them specifically to stop using/never use Google+?

I understand that in the Muslim world an open mouth (wide) is an offensive sexual gesture, or so I hear. Anyone know if this is true? If you don't want it turning into MySpace I wouldn't allow alcohol or branded items to appear either. With the gradual move towards specialized social media they should develop Google+ to be an effective hub for all of your other social media sites you like to visit. FaceBook is not especially tuned to this and its current setup is not good for organizing your on-line social

Since we know the middle finger will get banned, why not try to do as many of the other gestures as possible?

That should not be hard since some groups e.g. Hutterites [wikipedia.org] hold photography of people as violating religious laws....although since they are on a web site I'm guessing not many of them will notice. Which probably explains why so many pictures turn up for Hutterites when you do a Google image search since I'm sure Google would have blocked those images if asked due to their highly offensive nature.

There might be some truth to it. Or Google is looking at MySpace, and how it was derided as the social network for angsty teens who are trying to shock themselves into relevance.

I think it's simpler than that though. Google is trying so hard to make a relevant social network that it is managing it from the top down. Unfortunately, Social Networks don't work that way. The only reason people will use one is because they get some benefit from it. If the main thing they get from is constant aggravation about playing by some arbitrary rules, they are going to leave.

I would love for there to be a social network around that competes with Facebook. The reality at this point though is that Google+, despite its nifty circles, ain't it. I should be their main evangelist, but I can't endorse a social network where some arbitrary and unknown rule is going to get the entire thing yanked. Dear Google, please let me fuck up my own social network. If I can't be trusted to not put up pictures of me that aren't offensive, will piss off my boss or have my girlfriend walk out on me, then please don't try to help me. You have no idea what is acceptable for 7Billion people, and shouldn't try.

This is the kind of thing where Google ought to keep in mind the old mantra about asking for permission vs for forgiveness - keep the heavy-handed stuff for when you're successful. Kinda like Facebook.

Here's the difference: seatbelts on vs seatbelts off is a very simple situation. It's easy to figure out which one is which, easy to figure out how much each situation costs to implement and to enforce, and how much benefit each one has to those impacted by the decision.

Offensive content, on the other hand, is near impossible to police on a world-wide level. It is impossible to know who is offended by what, the number of things that offend someone somewhere is much greater than those that do not offend anyone anywhere, the policing is horribly expensive, false positives abound and the benefits gained from this approach are unknown at best.

That's why Google's approach is wrong, again. I have to admit, I'm agreeing more and more with someone else's assessment that Google is, at its core, a tech company run by techies, and therefore unable (or at least has a much harder time) to produce something that tickles people's soft underbelly and need for personal validation. They have great tools - love gmail, love maps, love their search - but those are tools. I use them, then stop using them and don't think about them until I have to use them again. Their use is strictly determined by their usefulness: if something else comes along that is better, I will switch in a heartbeat. But they suck at producing an experience - something that makes me feel fuzzy on the inside every time I use it. And quite frankly, that's what Facebook is and does: it satisfies the urge of humans to interact and be social. Until Google understands the purpose of social networks and satisfies those needs, it's going to fail with its last-ditch attempt a staying relevant in one of the most important areas of the Internet.

Offensive content, on the other hand, is near impossible to police on a world-wide level. It is impossible to know who is offended by what, the number of things that offend someone somewhere is much greater than those that do not offend anyone anywhere, the policing is horribly expensive, false positives abound and the benefits gained from this approach are unknown at best.

That's why Google's approach is wrong, again.

No. It is wrong because freedom of expression includes the right to offend others. Or to put it clearly, freedom of expression does not stop just because what I am saying is offensive to some people.

The fact that a prohibition on "offensive content" cannot practically be enforced on a social network is a relief, but the thing is, they shouldn't be trying. If you don't want to see someone's posts, just kick him out of your circles.

Maybe superfluous, and certainly off-topic, but the obligation to wear seatbelts does not come from a desire to protect the driver. It's designed to encourage the correct emergency response.

What would you do if you saw a child run in front of your car? For the sake of pedantry, let's assume that "your car" describes a high-speed motorized vehicle that you're currently operating. You would brake, I hope? Now imagine that you are not wearing a seatbelt. Would you brace yourself before slamming on the brakes? Would you hesitate, even for a split second? Even though you are relatively safe in the car (especially since you can hold on to the steering wheel), that split second translates to meters more distance before full stop. Now imagine your girlfriend or child sitting in the seat next to you, again without seatbelt. Will you still hit the brakes, knowing that your passenger will hit the windshield?

That is the reason why seatbelts are not optional: they are there so you feel safe and protected enough to perform an emergency stop if you need to, without second-guessing.

It's part of that. But also that it started as markettability: "car x is safer as car y so if you care about your life, you but car x".

Later this got put into law (Health insurance costs, disabilities, people being taken out of workforce, political popularity: "He cares abour our safety", people who care about the lives of those who don't care and could drive reckless,...) and later insurance companies who need to insure for less injury or death (and those who stay behind like women and children without a

I was under the impression the two finger salute had something to do with a war, where a king ordered the index and middle finger cut from all archers hands so they could no longer shoot, the sign then became an insult by showing the king you still had your fingers. Like a big "fook you"

In my country, we believe showing our genitals to others is a sign of respect. Likewise, not showing our genitals (and anus and mammaries) is offensive. To have google+ picture that does not demonstrate pubis or arsehole etc would be deeply offensive.

They caught enough flak with the making users use their real names. I can't see this going over much better. In order to compete with the Facebook's and Diaspora's you'd think they would need to take a more open minded approach to things.

COMPETE with Diaspora? Give me a break. Diaspora is alpha software that requires users to run their own web server. It's a fucking great concept that will nonetheless never catch on with a large enough audience to ever matter to anyone but its users.

The same could be said about desktop Linux, but Linux has found plenty of life in other markets. Until Diaspora finds that niche, there's no "competition" to speak of.

Diaspora doesn't require you to run your own server (a node called a "pod"), what it does is allow you to run your own node and still interact with all other nodes. This is is why it's a distributed social network.

I think most users are still on the main node, however there are a bunch of pods [podupti.me] that you can choose from.

In order to compete with the Facebook's and Diaspora's you'd think they would need to take a more open minded approach to things.

Competing with Facebook means competing for the thirty-to-fifty crowd - and your "open minded" scheme is precisely the opposite of what attracts them. The absolute last thing Google wants is to repeat the mistakes of MySpace and LiveJournal and have a reputation as being a has-been that attracts mostly teen and young adult drama. Facebook is already getting something of that reputation with all the party pics, etc... etc...

Why the thirty to fifty crowd? Because, as many Slashdotters fail to realize, Facebook introduced a seismic shift in the social network paradigm - it's not just for kids anymore. Social networking is now used by a variety of businesses and professionals, and where they go, people will follow. (Though Google seems to have missed that.) Where the older folks go, the slightly less older folks will follow to stay connected. You can't build a stable social networking system on fly-by-night, short attention span, follow the fashion, teens and twentysomethings. The name of the game now is slowly grasping each demographic in turn, and building a solid base from there.

As far as competing with Diaspora - that's like claiming the NY Yankees are competing with the little league teams that plays down the road from me. It's laughable. As popular as Diaspora is with the disaffected Slashdot and/or techie crowd... It's meaningless in the larger scheme of things. Those enamored of Diaspora are those pissed at other networks, and they'll get pissed and move on again. They're unstable and marginal.

Care to define what common sense is in this case? Is it trying to grab the low hanging fruit (ie remove gestures that the censors at Google think are bad), or is realising that you can't appease everybody (and hence just forget about it)?

certainly they used the same cultural bias the poster did - I'm waiting for all female profiles who have pictures of themselves with heads uncovered to be banned. Islam seems to be getting more popular every day, and vocal, so it's only a matter of time before the Google censors bow to such "politically correct" pressure.

And there's your solution: flag all images as inapropriate (... or have a script do it for you...), and it becomes prohibitively expensive for them to check them all...

Simply scheduling the order of review in a way which causes people with lots of flags to get their pictures scheduled for review less frequently neatly makes it so that this attack has minimal effect on the speed with which Google can review flags of pictures by people who aren't adopting this attempt to bog the system down, without consuming

They want profile pics to be inoffensive. The middle finger gesture is offensive, and intentionally so. They're not going to remove things that might offend specific foreigners because those foreigners make up a vanishingly small segment of their user base. To complain about this seeming contradiction is to commit a line drawing fallacy.

They're not going to remove things that might offend specific foreigners because those foreigners make up a vanishingly small segment of their user base. To complain about this seeming contradiction is to commit a line drawing fallacy.

Actually, non-US people make up majority of the worlds population. Should they remove anything that can offend someone somewhere? Because then we have nothing there.

Way to commit the EXACT fallacy that I just said you would commit. Hey, let's try it in the other direction... "If they can't disallow offensive content, then should they allow child porn?" It's no less absurd then thinking that disallowing the middle finger means they have to disallow all content.

And who cares what the global demographic is? What matters is the google+ demographic, which is predominantly American, with a bunch of Indians, Canadians, and British thrown in. The Muslim membership is minis

This is a very good policy to keep up the atmosphere in G+ and not deteriote so a myspace or facebook.

It's another universe, if you want to put up "immature" material, don't go on G+. It's the same as with the Android store or AppStore of IPhone: "you are offered a free platform. But the platform is defined for you. IF you want to express yourself outside of the set boundaries, take your expression onto yourself and your own platforms/tools"

Agreed. Start a social network of your own, pay for the servers, staff and bandwidth. Fill it with angry techs who rant about freedoms on a platform they pay nothing to join. They can call it....
slashdot

Sure, but Google wants to be competitor to Facebook and have the largest social network on the planet. This means they have to accept stuff that is "immature" too. And that's not even counting the cultural issues.

Removing middle finger pictures is a statement on obscenity and isn't really a great fight over censorship and intrusiveness is a relative concept on the internet. Think of G+ as a big cafe, you wouldn't flip the bird there if you were a reasonable person, so why do it on G+?

I am on both, but G+ lays fallow because G+ doesn't have anything that motivates me to move everything over to G+. The last brouhaha with real names turned me off. Active censorship of accounts like this also turns me off.

As a side note, I didn't look, but I expect ESR to be licking Google's boots on this subject too, as it applies to his "civility" and "hotgirl69 problem."

It's Google's business - they can run it however they want. If you walk into a McDonalds and start swearing and cursing out loud, I think it's reasonable _and expected_ to be escorted off the premises. Google is simply doing the same thing, just on the internet. And here's the important part: If you don't like it, don't use it. Easy. Stop bitching and complaining - if you don't like their product, don't use it. Move on.

I suppose the difference is that you'll be escorted off the premises if someone complains. If no-one has a problem with it, what's the problem?

Google, unfortunately, takes the approach usually preferred by dictatorships and fanatic groups where they decide what is and isn't allowed and then enforces it, regardless of whether the common userbase (or populace) has a problem with it.

The argument of "don't like it don't use it" starts to fall apart when the service becomes large enough. For example, you may not

As you said it's business, and it's bad business for Google. That's the whole point of complaining. You write a complaint to a company to tell them that you care enough about an issue that you are willing to give them the chance to know why you are angry, instead of just walking out the door without an explanation. I don't agree in whining just to whine, but it's perfectly fine to critique actions from a company.

In Ukraine showing thumbs up with your hand is considered obscene due to some vague reference to erected penis. I have been reprimanded for showing it by older Ukrainians. I think that younger people no longer care about this though.

Wikipedia also mentions that it is also offensive in Iran but I have no direct experience about it.

This is why Google+ is failing now. Like other Google Serveries they maintain ridicules rules on what can and cannot be done. This rule problem is in all Google serveries, not just in Google+. This is also why Google+ is now failing. Because once Google+ removes your profile picture. People often remove there Google+ profile, for good.

I was recently stopped by a local police officer here in Texas because he thought he saw me shoot the finger at another driver ( I didn't but have from time to time ) . He informed me that it was against the law to make offensive gestures. I had never heard this so I did a little digging and discovered it was in fact...law. But these laws often use loosely defining terms like "offensive gesture". Well any gesture can be offensive depending on who interprets it. Perhaps that's why Ashley Esqueda has had a mi

Apparently if a majority of people find something offensive, it should be banned regardless of whether or not it inflicts any tangible harm upon them. I know these are Google's servers and they can do pretty much anything they want, but that doesn't exempt them from criticism.

So, are Google staff going through and flagging these manually, or do they have some kind of algorithm to detect whether a photo has a raised middle finger in it? I wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter, considering this is Google we're talking about. It opens up some interesting new Image Search possibilities...

because some people could be offended by others wearing them... don't laugh... this PC crap is infesting everywhere these days... Google, you idiots, you've opened yourself up to every fringe nut group with an axe to grind to complain about items in profile pictures that they find offensive...

Unlike most of the posts here, I support the rule, if not the reasoning which, I think we all know, is bullshit.

The real reason is along the lines of:

"If we let all of you idiots use your profile pictures to show what an unoriginal, angsty little twaffle you are, then the people who might actually want to join and add to the community are going to be run off. Not because they're afraid of naughty hand gestures that they doubtless throw around like rice at a wedding on every commute home from work, but becau

I mean clearly I should be free to display idiotic hand gestures to anybody in my circle and those who search me! GRR! Ok, really, it's google service and their decision to not let you have the middle finger as a profile picture is their business, something I passively support since we're all big boys and girls who need to use our words and not come across as popped collar pink shirt wearing frat losers. I know freedom of speech is a vague concept most of us understand but the middle finger isn't really protected and google is within their rights to do this.

If you have an android device, or even an important email / google voice account, getting banned would be a nightmare. So now you're looking at multiple accounts, which loses the whole 'integrated' advantage.

Google needs to take a serious look at their banning policies and how they have ripple effects. Being banned from their social media shouldn't affect any of your other accounts. Email abuses (like spamming) are a completely different transgression than not meeting google's (apparently puritan, also seemingly arbitrary) social media standards / rules.

Google is everywhere, and they have local companies too. Their headquarters might be in U.S., but you can't really say that Google is American company. Especially with the tax holes they use so they can pay less U.S. taxes.

The trouble with "$Company is a $Country company" is when that company has a large number of global clients/users. If $company starts cracking down on something only related to $country, then it opens themselves up to charges of $country specific bias.

Whoa, whoa. No good can come from that attitude. Who decides what is civil? It doesn't really fit into, "it's an American value" mantra, I'm sure many of the people showing their middle fingers in those pictures ARE Americans. I'm an American and I'm considering joining the profile protest even though I'm not the type of person who would throw that out there normally (and my family has my google+ info, so it's going to be annoying explaining that to the more conservative among them).

If you don't want to be associated with people who would post pictures you consider crass, don't visit their google pages. Don't go trying to "create civility" by censuring them.

And they can still only give their opinions about what is and is not civil.

The real problem I see is that some people think they have a right to not be offended. So what if someone gets offended by the middle finger (or something else)? Will that bring about the apocalypse? I say let them be offended.

we being every older than an angsty teenager mentally

Yes. Anyone with a different opinion than you is just an "angsty teenager."

The real problem I see is that some people think they have a right to not be offended.

This, a million times over.

Consequently, if you actually read and comprehend the Constitution and Amendments, you'll note that within the First Amendment, there is no limitation specified on freedom of expression; in fact, the First specifically prohibits the federal government from establishing any sort of inhibition, evidenced by use of the phrase, "Congress shall make no law..." Essentially, everyone has the right to be offensive, and if one finds another's expression offensive, one has the right to sto

Google may have started in the US but they have offices in over 80 countries now.

An individual or group does not have to force their limited view of civility on other people. One group forcing their view of civility on others by removing pictures of self-expression is censorship. Since they are a private enterprise they are free to do this but that does not change that it's censorship.